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Nepal Chitwan

Psilocybe cubensis

Nepal Chitwan

A genuine Nepalese dung collection, reportedly gathered near the Chitwan jungle on elephant or rhino dung. Reddish cinnamon caps, a dark purple-brown print, and one of the few cubes with a real wild origin story.

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Sold for microscopy, taxonomy and collecting only. Not for cultivation.

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The short version

Nepal Chitwan is a landrace-style Psilocybe cubensis, said to have been collected near the Chitwan jungle in southern Nepal from elephant or rhino dung. Unlike most cube names, it carries a fairly specific wild-collection story. It is a plain cubensis with reddish cinnamon caps, a dark purple-brown spore print, and textbook subellipsoid spores. A characterful collector's piece with a real sense of place.

Straight talk

Fact vs. legend

There is a lot of folklore around this strain. Here is which bits are real, side by side.

What we actually know

It is a plain Psilocybe cubensis: a wild geographic collection, not a hybrid and not a separate species.
It is named for the Chitwan region of southern Nepal, in the Terai lowlands near the Himalayan foothills, where cubensis grows in a warm subtropical climate.
By the widely repeated account it was collected on what appeared to be elephant or rhino dung, fitting cubensis as a coprophilic (dung-loving) species.
It drops a dark purple-brown spore print, the normal pigmented cubensis colour, with no albino or leucistic trait reducing the deposit.
Reported spores sit around the species norm, roughly 13 x 8 um, smooth and subellipsoid with a flattened germ pore.

What the community says

The collection is usually credited to a gatherer remembered only as "Baerbel", said to have found three specimens in the village of Sauraha near the Chitwan jungle. Treat this as a single-source origin tale rather than firmly documented history.
The story goes that the specimens were growing in otherwise dry conditions, shaded by a nearby tree, on what looked like elephant or rhino dung. A nice detail, but unverified.
Because it carries a real-sounding place name, it is sometimes marketed as wildly potent or exotic. By most accounts it behaves like any other cube, a cube is a cube.
Some sellers blur "Nepal" and "Chitwan" into one catch-all Himalayan strain. The specific line collectors trade is the Chitwan collection, not a generic Nepalese cube.

The story

A cube with a passport

Most famous cube names are forum nicknames or vendor inventions with no real geography behind them. Nepal Chitwan is one of the more believable exceptions. It is named for the Chitwan region of southern Nepal, the warm Terai lowlands at the foot of the Himalayas, an area better known for its national park, its rhinos and its elephants than for its fungi. As a coprophilic species, Psilocybe cubensis follows large grazing animals wherever the climate is warm and wet, and the dung of Chitwan's megafauna is exactly the kind of substrate it favours.

The collection story that travels with this line credits a gatherer remembered only as Baerbel, who is said to have found three specimens in the village of Sauraha, on the edge of the Chitwan jungle. The mushrooms were reportedly growing in otherwise dry ground, shaded by a tree, on what appeared to be either elephant or rhino dung. It is a lovely, specific anecdote, and it gets repeated almost word for word across the hobby, which is exactly why it pays to hedge it. One consistent account is not the same as documented history.

It is one of the few cube names where the place on the label might actually mean something. The caveat is that the whole origin rests on a single collector's account.

Just a very well-travelled cube

Whatever the truth of the Sauraha story, the genetics are not exotic. Growers on the forums are blunt about it: it is a cube like any other, with some reporting it is a touch slower to get going. There is no evidence it is unusually strong, and the "rare Himalayan superstrain" framing some shops lean on is marketing, not mycology. What you get is a characterful collection with reddish cinnamon caps and a clean dark print, and a name that, for once, points at a real spot on the map.

The species

Meet Psilocybe cubensis

Nepal Chitwan is a collector’s line of a single, well-travelled species. Psilocybe cubensis was first written up in 1906 by the American mycologist Franklin Sumner Earle, from a specimen found in a cattle field in Cuba, which is where the name comes from. He originally called it Stropharia cubensis; Rolf Singer moved it into the genus Psilocybe in 1948.

The genus name is a tidy bit of Greek: psilos (“bare”) plus kubē (“head”), for the smooth, peelable skin of the cap, so the full name reads roughly as “the bare-headed mushroom from Cuba.”

Family: Hymenogastraceae (older books say Strophariaceae)
Genus: Psilocybe (Fr.) P. Kumm., 1871
Species: Psilocybe cubensis (Earle) Singer, 1948
Basionym: Stropharia cubensis Earle, 1906
This product: Nepal Chitwan, a collector’s cultivar of the species
Type locality: Cuba (where it was first named)

How you’d know it

Field marks

These describe the mature mushroom for reference and identification.

Reddish cinnamon cap

Tends toward a reddish or cinnamon-brown in youth, fading toward golden-yellow as it matures and the convex cap broadens out and flattens. Often paler at the rim, the usual cubensis pattern.

Pale, sturdy stem

White to creamy or faintly yellowish, thick and fibrous. A partial veil leaves a ring (annulus) around the upper stipe, which usually catches a dusting of falling spores.

Darkening gills

Crowded and pale grey-brown when young, deepening to dark purplish-black as the spores ripen. The print itself comes off dark purple-brown, a normal heavy pigmented cubensis deposit.

Blue bruising

Handle the flesh and it bruises blue-green where damaged, the classic Psilocybe reaction as psilocin oxidises. Reported on both cap and stem of this line.

Where it comes from

A dung-lover with a wanderer’s history

Psilocybe cubensis is coprophilic, a fancy word for dung-loving. In the wild it lives on the droppings of big grazing animals, classically cattle and water buffalo, fruiting from warm, humid pasture. It does not grow on wood and it does not partner with tree roots.

You’ll find it across the warm parts of the world: the Gulf Coast of the United States, Mexico, Central and South America, Southeast Asia and Australia. It was named from Cuba, but where the lineage truly began is an open question. A 2026 study describing its closest wild relative in southern Africa suggests the deep roots are Old-World, the mushroom having apparently travelled with grazing herds long before anyone gave it a Latin name.

The main event

Under the microscope

This is what you actually bought the spores for. Put a print or a drop from a syringe on a slide and here’s what shows up.

Shape & size. Smooth, thick-walled and subellipsoid, like a slightly squashed rugby ball, roughly 11.5–17 µm long by 8–11 µm wide (the figures Paul Stamets settled on).
The germ pore. Look for a single pale, flattened dot at one end. That’s the one thin spot in the wall where, in nature, a mushroom would begin, and a real cubensis hallmark.
Pale alone, dark in a crowd. A single spore looks honey-amber with the light behind it; only in a mass do they read deep purple-brown to black. So a near-black print but pale spores on the slide is normal optics, not a dud.
What you’ll need. Find the field at 100×, study shape and the germ pore at 400×, and get the wall crisp at 1000× under oil. A touch of methylene blue or KOH lifts the contrast.
The legal bit, and why it’s true. A dormant spore carries no psilocybin or psilocin at all; that chemistry only appears later in living tissue. That is exactly why the spores are legal to own and study in the UK.

Choose your format

Print, syringe, vial or swab?

Same lab-grade genetics in every option. The honest difference is shelf life versus how soon you’re at the scope.

Spore print

Keeps longest

Spores dropped straight onto sterile foil. Stored cool and dry it outlasts everything else here, so it’s the one to reach for if you’re building a collection to keep for years.

Spore syringe

Ready tonight

Spores suspended in sterile water, ready to go straight onto a slide. The quickest way to be looking down the microscope this evening. Comes in 3 mL and 12 mL.

Vial & swab

Compact

A sealed glass vial is a tidy middle ground; a sterile swab is the most travel-friendly, robust little format for adding a strain to your reference set.

At a glance

The spec sheet

Species: Psilocybe cubensis
Strain: Nepal Chitwan (collector’s cultivar)
Spore print: Dark purple-brown to near-black, heavy depositor
Spore shape: Subellipsoid, smooth, thick-walled, with a germ pore
Spore size: ~11.5–17 × 8–11 µm
Basidia: Mostly 4-spored, ~20–30 × 7–10 µm
Wild habitat: Coprophilic, on herbivore dung & warm pasture
Climate: Subtropical to tropical
Intended use: Microscopy, research & collecting only

Dig deeper

Frequently asked

Yes, for microscopy and research. A dormant spore contains no psilocybin or psilocin, so the spores themselves are not a controlled substance in the UK. We sell them strictly for microscopy, taxonomy and collecting, never for cultivation.

It is consistent but not proven. The line is widely said to have been collected by someone called Baerbel near Sauraha, on the edge of the Chitwan jungle, from elephant or rhino dung. That account repeats almost identically everywhere, which means it traces back to one source. We present it as the community origin story rather than documented fact.

No. It is a plain Psilocybe cubensis. The exotic place name gets used to imply special potency, but there is no evidence for that. As collectors say, a cube is a cube. The interest here is the origin and the look, not any ranking by strength.

Smooth, subellipsoid, thick-walled spores around 13 x 8 um, pale amber individually and dark purple-brown in a mass, each with a small flattened germ pore at one end. Find them at 100x, study at 400x, and get the wall sharp at 1000x under oil immersion.

If you want something that keeps for years on a shelf, take the print. If you want to be at the microscope sooner, take the syringe. The vial and swab sit in between on convenience.

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Questions and answers

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For microscopy, taxonomy and collecting only.Sold for legal research. Not for cultivation. Spores contain no controlled substances. We trust you to be responsible.